


The Wind in the West

by In_Best_Interest



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adventure, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Body Horror, Gen, Guns, Hive-mind plant zombies, Horror, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Laughable incompetence, Magic, Sheer badassery, The Deeper World (magic), Wild West, humor?, kind of, specifically, wyoming - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-23 15:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11992896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_Best_Interest/pseuds/In_Best_Interest
Summary: Putting it here to keep me honest. The west - presumably a lot more - had been taken over by hivemind plant zombies and wraiths. People are just now investigating ways to start pushing it back. Hopefully ends up as nothing too heavy or dark.





	1. In the Woods One Day

Even the flies wouldn’t touch the dead body.

Ren Running Deer was fascinated. The Lakota boy was too young to really comprehend the danger - chubby and bright eyed, with a stubby braid and uneven bangs. It was all some kind of adventure to him, detached from the reality of the world he lived in. He crouched in the prickly bed of needles under the pines, staring at the body caught against the stump. From here, it looked dubiously to have been a man, but the state of decay it had reached didn’t help. Only the light that struck it had caught Ren’s eye, as most of the rest of the forest was draped in shadows.

“Whoa,” Ren said in a hushed voice.

Something rustled in the bushes behind him, and another boy, only four or five years older, emerged. There were sticks caught in his braided hair, and he bore a striking resemblance to Ren. “You can’t leave me alone like that,” he panted. “One of us might get lost, and then what would happen? What?” he added, as Ren grabbed his hand and dragged him over. “What?”

“That,” Ren declared, pointing to the dead body.

He didn’t process what he was looking for a second or two. Then his mouth dropped open. “What - the hell is that?”

Ren smacked at him. “Bad word, Eden! And it’s a dead person! Wonder how he kicked it. There’s a lot out here that could do it.” He took a step forward, just as Eden took a step back.

“We need to tell someone. Ren, we gotta go,” Eden said. He pulled at Ren’s arm, but Ren didn’t move. He was still staring at the body, focused.

“Wonder if he was a raider.”

“Renwegottagonow!” Eden moaned, pulling harder on Ren’s arm.

But Ren shook him off and picked his way forward, wary but not wary enough to matter. Eden shook his head, and Ren sensed his hesitation, turned back. “What?” he asked. “What are you scared of?”

“Everything!” Eden said. “It’s a dead guy! Let’s just leave it alone and keep on going! You wanted to go to the waterfall, right? Let’s go to the waterfall instead!”

“The waterfall isn’t going anywhere, but he might,” Ren pointed out. “And you know how weird dad is about anything dead. Wouldn’t even let me box up that squirrel and bury it. If you don’t take your chance to look at a dead body now, you might now get another one. Do you want to go your whole life and not get to touch a dead body?” Eden shifted from foot to foot and looked very uncomfortable. “Well, do you?” Ren pressed.

Eden squirmed for another couple of seconds. “No,” he admitted.

“Well then come on. You can touch it once and be done with it. I wanna take a good look, though,” he added with a broad grin. He was missing a tooth.

Pushing his hair back, Eden thought it through, looking like he would much rather be elsewhere. 

“Chicken,” Ren shot at him. Eden looked affronted. “Baby. I thought you were supposed to be the older brother.”

“Okay,” he relented. “But then we need to go!”

“Good,” Ren said with satisfaction. “I’mma look at it first.” He turned on his heel and headed towards the body at a march. 

The march, however, turned into a creep very quickly. When he had been a good distance from the body, it hadn’t been so scary - just a lump of dead flesh stuffed into some clothes, no big deal. But the darkness of the woods around him, the dust motes hanging in the air, the smell of rot mixing with the tang of sap and dirt, even the lack of insects buzzing around the body - it suddenly felt like a much different place. In that moment, he started feeling the fear that his brother was feeling, the fear that he should have felt from the moment he saw the body. He stopped a couple of feet short and stared, holding his breath.

“Oh my gosh,” he breathed. “Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh-”

“I don’t like this,” Eden warned.

Ren didn’t hear him, or didn’t pay attention. He inched closer. The skin was stiff and leathery, dried out in the sun, the body stiff from lack of moisture. His hat had fallen off and lay several feet away, grubby and riddled with holes. Fallen with his back to Ren, his face was obscured against the trunk of the tree. What stood out most was the small bloody hole in his back, and the dried puddle it had made around him.

“I’mma turn him over with a stick,” Ren said.

“No,” Eden protested, but Ren had already scooted into the woods and come back bearing a sturdy branch longer than his arm. He hesitated, but then pushed the body over with a sharp prod. Eden jumped back as it rolled towards him.

Just like before, Ren stared. One of the man’s eyes had been smushed shut, but the other stared at the sky, cloudy and dried. His face had rotted a bit, and Ren stared at that too.  
“I’ll poke him and then you do, okay? I’m going first so you can see it’s alright.” Eden didn’t respond. He was staring at the body, looking like he was about to be ill. Ren waited, but when his brother didn’t say anything, he leaned forward, index finger held stiff and ready. The entire forest seemed to hold its breath.

Something grabbed Ren hard around the upper arm and jerked him away. Ren squealed in surprise. It was Eden, and he looked terrified again. “Eden! Eden - ow, you’re hurting me!”

“Don’t touch him!”

“He won’t bite!”

“Look!” Eden spat, harsh in his fear. He had been backing them away, but stopped to point at the body. “There! In the mouth!”

Ren stared up at his brother, then looked back at the body. For a moment, maybe two, he didn’t see anything. 

But then he saw the strange, vine-like growths that had poked themselves out between the man’s teeth and just past his lips. At once, he stopped fighting his brother. “Oh,” he said. Now he looked properly unsettled, but still too curious for the situation. “Oh,” he repeated, craning his neck to get a better look. “I haven’t seen it outside of pictures before.”

“He’s infested,” Eden said. “And we need to go and tell someone about this.”

“Actually, depending on how long the body has been there, it might be dead. It can’t survive more than three days, tops, without a living host. He looks kind of-”

“Ren!”

“Okay, okay,” Ren conceded. “We’ll tell someone. But we won’t be allowed out for so long, especially not back here.”

Eden shook his head. “I don’t care,” he stated. “I don’t care. I’m never coming out here again.”

“You can’t just… never leave!”

Already walking, pulling Red with him, Eden shot over one shoulder, “Watch me!”

Ren was dragging his heels, not wanting to leave so fast, but Eden was bigger and stronger and kept going. “Eden!” Ren cried out. “Eden, you’re scaring me!”

“I’m scaring you? That thing back there-” Eden flung an arm back towards where the dead man lay, “-should be what’s scaring you! Do you think this is some kind of game? A field trip? Because it’s not! It’s not!”

“I know it’s not a game!” Ren finally succeeded in squirming free of his older brother’s grip and stood, panting.”But I’m not going to hide away the rest of my life!”

Eden had set off again, and as much as he might have not wanted to go, Ren also didn’t want to be left alone in the woods with that body, so he followed. “Well, maybe you should. At least if you stay in town, behind the barricades, you’ll be perfectly safe.”

Ren sniffed. “Yeah,” he muttered, quiet enough so Eden couldn’t hear. “And perfectly bored.”

Mayor Running Deer was swift in solving the problem - the body was burned, and the area roped off. The citizens cowered in fear behind the barricades and asked each other how this could have possibly happened so close to their good little town, so close in a safe area. They also talked about how close they might have been, and how lucky they were. The children played telephone with the rumors and chased each other around, pretending to be infested.

And before Ren Running Deer was allowed to go outside the barricades again, he had lost another four teeth, and before Eden Running Deer went outside willingly, he was no longer a child.


	2. The Secret Keeper

While Drew Running Deer, the mayor and Ren’s father, and Eden could disapprove of Ren’s activities all they wanted, they couldn’t do anything to stop him in the absence of an infestation. So after the allotted safe period, Ren was grudgingly allowed the barricades again. The town was safe, true, behind its solid walls and with the watchers patrolling along the tops, even in absence of any incidents. Time never dulled the novelty of the untouched spaces for him, however. The deep pine forests, the narrow rock gorges, the wide sweeps of plains - it never tired him, and day after day, year after year, he went out from behind the walls to find their secret places. He could not be stopped from wandering across the landscape, exploring and staring in awe around at the wilderness.

However, he could be stopped from bringing back once-infested human remains into a safe area. Which would put him in hot water up to his neck. Which was why he had to be careful about smuggling a skull into town, unless he wanted to spend the night in the jail block.

Night had fallen deep over the land when he crested the last hill and stood, looking out over Jackson. Electricity, while less precious than it had been long ago, was not wasted, so there were only a few twinkling lights to mark it against the dark stretches of trees and grass. The lamps the watchers carried were what he was looking for, and he picked them out along the top of the wall, moving slowly along their routes. He watched them and waited. Under the shadows of the trees and crouched in the underbrush, he’d be invisible from this distance.

When the glow of one lantern turned the corner of the wall, he moved. He darted from the shelter of the trees and flew across the stretch of open ground between the safety of the pines and the wall. Grass whipped at his shins, rocks skittering under his feet. Vaulting a sagebrush, he skidded into the shadow of the wall and crouched down. The noise had attracted attention, and one of the watchers above shone his flashlight out into the darkness, scanning for anything out of the ordinary.

Ren waited. Even the racket the crickets were making didn’t seem like enough to muffle the thunder of the blood in his ears.

Above, a crackle of static from a hand-held radio and somone’s voice: “You see anything out there? Thought I heard something booking it through the undergrowth or something.”

There was no way he could have been seen. He had been too fast to be caught in the beam of a flashlight, and the watcher on the wall hadn’t pointed his light straight down onto Ren. His maneuver had worked, like it always did, because he knew what he was doing. He had done this before, and it would work like it always did.

But strangely, despite his certainty, he felt a swooping rush of relief when the watcher above answered into his radio, “Nothing. Well, probably just a deer or something. But really nothing.” The flashlight flicked off. From above, the footsteps of the watcher started off, and faded quickly. Ren was left alone. Breath coming out in a slow, long whoosh, he waited for another couple of seconds to make sure he was completely alone, then started off again.

The barricade was made well, but it wasn’t completely impenetrable, especially to someone intelligent with opposable thumbs. This section had been made out of shipping containers. Rocks had been used to weigh down the ones in the most-assaulted positions, and all of them had been drilled into the ground. The lot of them were immovable, and even with the the paint chipping away and the metal corroding in places after years in the elements, the slick sides impossible to climb. But he didn’t need to move them, or climb them. There was one that had been set a little off-kilter from the rest, just enough for him to wiggle into the space between it and the next one. He worked open the door at one end, slid inside, and then shut the shipping container behind him.

Darkness. Complete and absolute darkness. Without the moon or even the faint wink of stars, nothing could be seen in the shipping container. It smelled of wet dirt, metal, and the rot of things that had crept into the metal box and died there, trapped and then dry-roasted, the sun turning it into an oven. But at night, Ren was safe. He felt his way towards the other end of the shipping container, careful to not stumble on the ridges in the metal. He made it to the other end without incident, and jimmied open the door at the other side and slipped out, safe within the walls of town. 

He was careful to shut the door behind him. Animals - or worse things - slipping in and giving away his handy little bolt-hole could get it blocked up. And it was his, truly. There was not enough of a criminal presence inside the town for it to see traffic, and he had watched, sprinkled dust and set tripwires. Nothing. It was his secret alone, his path to slip in without notice with objects that certainly wouldn’t be allowed inside the walls.

Such as the skull. A hard ridge of it bounced painfully against his leg as he bounded down off a rock and landed hard on the packed earth. He glanced around even as he kept jogging, but at the very outskirts of the town, no one had heard him. The houses were a couple hundred yards away, and most of them had no lights on.

But there was one house that stood away from the rest. Low and squat, half of it dug into the hill, the light of a candle burning in the window, it hunkered right up against the barrier. It had once been in the middle of a stand of trees, but the barrier had been built through the trees, several knocked down carelessly. Ren drew up to the front door and knocked.

Something moved inside the house, but then was still. Ren waited in the dark. It took so long for someone to answer the door that he thought he had come too late, and that he would have to wait until tomorrow morning to deliver his contraband. But then the floorboard creaked from inside, and the door opened, wide enough for the house’s occupant - a stocky old woman - to stick her head out. Her face couldn’t be seen in the darkness. Her voice was enough, however: crackly and lowered to not much more than a whisper.

“You’re late.”

“Sorry,” Ren replied. “I got hung up in the forest.”

“Better come in before someone gets nosy.”

Ren obeyed, and slid in past the old woman into the house. The doorway was short enough to make him duck underneath it, and the ceiling wasn’t much taller. Even the light of one candle was enough to make that clear. He slouched to give himself head room, fumbling with his bag as he went for the table. “Got what you asked for. I thought it might be completely gone, but I was lucky.” He set the bag down on the table and produced a handkerchief out of his pocket. Digging around in the bag for a second or two, he produced his prize: a human skull, dirt entrenched so deep in it that it was brown, pebbles caught between the teeth. It was flaking from age. Setting it down on the table, he retrieved the lower jaw from the bag and set it down next to the rest of the skull. All the while, he was careful not to touch any of the bone with his bare hands.

The old woman clapped her hands together, eager. “Good,” she said. “That’s a good grandson.”

Ren whipped his handkerchief through the air a couple of times to clean it off. “I’m glad you appreciate it. It was a pain to get a hold of, lemme tell you,” he added.

Shifting a pile of letters addressed to ‘Abigail Touches-the-Moon’ aside, she knelt down to study the skull, turning to inspect it from every angle with eyes sharp as thorns. Her black hair was streaked with grey, and her tawny face was cut deep with wrinkles. But as she stood again and stepped around the table to look at it from behind, she moved easily. “It’s in good enough shape,” she said. “Did you have any trouble getting into town?”

“Nope,” Ren said. “That’ wasn’t the problem. I just ran into a moose.”

“You were that late for a moose?”

Ren wrinkled his nose. “It’s a moose. Moose are terrifying animals, and that one would have curb-stomped me in a second.”

“You probably got too close,” Abigail told him.

Shrugging, he leaned against one of the house’s support posts. In the thirteen years since Ren had discovered the dead body, he’d grown up to be a handsome young man with a perfectly proportioned face. Abigail could be seen there, in the shape of his nose, in the tilt of his eyebrows, in the way he moved his mouth. His long, glossy braid was slung over one shoulder and tied off with yellow, yellow that stood out sharp against his black hair. “Maybe,” he answered.

“Hmmph,” Abigail noised. She picked up the skull and turned it over. Ren made a squeaking noise, and she looked up.

“What?”

“You’re going to touch it without gloves, or-?”

Abigail shook her head. “It’s not capable of transmission anymore, Ren. It’s completely inert. You’ve been listening to your brother’s scaremongering too much recently, I think.”

“Sometimes he has sensible things to say,” Ren muttered.

“And this is not one of those times. Dangerous though any kind of particles might be, they’ve long since died. This is about as capable of infesting something as that paperweight is. And also, if there were any chance that you were to be infested, I wouldn’t have made you go out to retrieve this.” She traced a finger around the jagged hole in the roof of the mouth. “Hmm,” she said.

“What?” Ren asked, leaning forward, eyebrows shooting up. “What is it?”

Abigail didn’t reply for a moment, tilting the skull back to see into the cavity that had once held a brain. “It looks like the infestation started somewhere in his brain, and then burst out through the roof of his mouth. If that didn’t kill him, I don’t want to imagine what kind of pain it would entail.”

“It didn’t kill him,” Ren answered.

“Oh?”

Ren shook his head. “No, he was shot in the chest. Probably to prevent the infestation from spreading.”

“Ah,” Abigail said, nodding. “Makes sense.” She went back to studying the skull, and Ren, having nothing to do, wandered about, picking up knick-knacks and fiddling with them for a second or two before moving on. He circled back around to the table, spotted the piles of letters, and plucked them up, flipping through them. His eyebrows drew together as he did so. 

Not looking up from her examination of the lower jaw, Abigail said, “You know, most people would mind you looking through their mail.”

“I know. Sorry,” Ren added, with a sheepish little grin.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“But why do you have so many of them?”

Abigail snorted. “That’d be the committee. Wanting to hear back on what I think of that expedition, no doubt. Well, I have no thoughts on it. They’ll have to go somewhere else.” Abigail put the jaw and the skull together as best as she could, not noticing that her words had grabbed his interest.

“Expedition?” he asked.

She shook her head. “The university has found it in themselves to throw some money at a hare-brained scheme to catalog the wilds. The state of them and the like. Probably someone's pipe dream with a reasonable funds request slapped on it.”

“Who all are they sending?” Ren asked. “Or do you know?”

“They’re still recruiting volunteers. Whoever they can get their hands on it sounds like. They’re probably scraping the bottom of the barrel, since it’s insanity.”

“Absolute insanity,” Ren agreed, without thought. Half-formed thoughts were already racing through his head like a herd of wild horses. With crystal clarity, he could see the abandoned places, the unfathomable stretches of open land, all of it. Madness to believe anything good would come of it, but tempting as the devil, the idea forming in his head made his lungs feel small with excitement. “Probably just going to get a bunch of weirdos. Who’s organizing them? Like, it is the history department or the sciences department or what?”

Abigail took a moment to answer. “Professors Brian Thompson and Caroletta Hernandez. It crosses departments, so you were completely right the first time.”

“So a mix of both. Primarily observational, I’d guess.”

She carefully rattled the skull, then collected the pebbles that fell out of the skull and sealed them in the bag. “As far as I can tell, yes,” she said. “Know that what information I have on it is limited. I’m only being consulted on it for my opinion as a mage.”

“Course,” Ren said. “Since you’d have some idea of what they’d be getting into, with what you deal with. Do you know what kind of people they’d be looking for?”  
Abgail, having produced a pick, threaded it between the teeth of the lower jaw and produced a tiny strip of something like leather. She dropped that into another bag, and continued to pick at the teeth. “Probably anyone they could scrounge up. But anyone who knew how science worked, mages, people who could fight. And Ren,” she added, looking up and fixing him with a hard stare, “you’re going to have to work harder than that at convincing people you’re not interested in suicide missions.”

Ren sputtered, trying to recover. “I am not! I’m just curious - it sounds-”

“-Like a chance you would leap at?” Abigail finished.

“Well maybe, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go.” Abigail snickered. “No, I’m serious!” he told her, indignant. “It’s all heroic and adventurous and stuff, but I couldn’t. Eden would skin me, and so would my father!” He scuffed at the floor, very interested in the path the tip of his shoe followed. “It’s great, but I can’t do it.”

Abigail studied him with a tilt to her head. “Does Eden have two lives?”

“What? I mean… no, not that I can think of.”

“Does your father?”

“No. I don’t think, anyway, since I’m not really sure what you’re asking.”

Abigail ignored the second part of the statement. “Then, if they don’t have two lives, why do you keep talking like both of them get to live yours?”

“They don’t,” Ren said. “I still go outside the barricades, and they’d never do that. I just don’t want them to be disappointed in me.”

“If a landmark expedition is their definition of disappointing, I pity them,” Abigail said. “Now - do you want to go?”

“Yes.”

Abigail dug through the letters, then produced one and handed it over. “Use the address there to get in touch with you you need,” she told him. “Don’t be afraid to play up your strengths if you’re serious about this.”

Ren held and looked at the letter like it was made of solid gold. “You’re going to help me?” he asked, not looking up from the letter. “I thought you wouldn’t want me to risk my neck like this.”

“You’re a fully-grown man. You can make your own decisions. And this was a long time coming. Ever since you found that body, I felt like you would do something like it one day.” Ren nodded mutely. He still hadn’t looked away from the letter. “And I trust your judgment, and I think you’re ready for this. Since you got me that skull without much hassle.” Ren was still focused on the letter, but he looked up when his grandmother touched his cheek and drew his eyes up. Her expression was solemn.

“What?” Ren asked, tension written into the lines of his smile.

Abigail shook her head. “You’re a fully grown man.” She let the assertion hang heavy in the air for a second before continuing. “But there’s danger out there, danger like you or even I have never seen. If you’re going to go, promise me you’ll be careful, and promise me you’ll use your head the entire time.”

Ren lost his words for too long. He opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, paused, the shut it, then finally managed to speak. “I will,” he promised. “I’ll be as careful as I can. You know, considering that I’ll be wandering out into the wilderness with a bunch of weirdos,” he added, looking back at his letter with a grin.

She did not smile back. Though she had taken her hand away from his face, she still studied him like he was something she would never see again. “It’s late. Unless you want to arouse suspicion, you should go back home now. Get some sleep. It’s late.”

“Yeah,” Ren agreed. “Yeah. Eden probably has his pants in a twist ‘cause I’m not back yet. He’s probably already organizing a search party to find my mauled corpse. Though I’m not sure mauling is my greatest risk of death out there,” he added, rubbing his chin. “Maybe falling to my death or something. Oh well. Anyways, you’re right. I’ll go back and stop my family from worrying. Hope that gives you some answers there,” he added, as he sauntered backwards towards the door. He scooped his bag off the table as he went. “What are you looking for anyways?”

Abigail set the skull down on the table and covered it with a cloth. “The infestation leaves traces in the bone, of many kinds. Those traces can be picked up with a number of different methods, and I’m hoping that even if I can’t get anything out of it, someone of a different profession can.”

“Huh,” Ren noised. “Well, I hope you’re lucky. Goodnight,” he added, pushing open the door. The cold night air blew in with a rush.

Abigail picked up the lone candle, sheltering it with her hands. The light jumped and danced in the cup of her palm, face lit with the dull orange light. “Goodnight,” she repeated.  
Ren shut the door behind him. Abigail was left alone, still sheltering the candle with her hand. Her gaze was focused past the walls, like she was watching her grandson traipse off back towards his house. With finality, she locked the door, bolt sliding into place with a ‘clunk’ that rang out loud against the silence. Then she blew the candle out and plunged the whole house into darkness.


	3. Burnt to Ashes

Brandt McKinnon had never expected to leave his cows. He was a rancher, simple as that. Even if he had been a glassblower, a carpenter, a firefighter, a wrangler, a bartender, and a mercenary, he was most definitely a rancher. Simple as that.

But then times got hard. First, the drought came, and seared all the water out of the earth, until the skin of it cracked and peeled, turned dry and red. Everything the sun touched withered into nothingness, or something so close to nothingness that it would dissolve in your fingers. Then the heat lit fires, and even the sky was obscured by heavy smoke that turned the plains into a strange, hazy dream world, the hills looming blue and indistinct out of the smog.

Then there were the diggers. The diggers emerged from the flaky ground and tore up the towns and the pastures, but worst of all, they tore up the cows, and some of the people too. For days, they were washing blood out and off of clothes and farm tools and weaponry and even the dirt.

And finally, there was the storm. The wind picked up, snatched rocks off the ground and hurled them into windows, then hurled down the rain. It had been needed for so long, but now it was a curse - drowning the plains in too much water, washing away more earth, blowing down fences and even staving in roofs. The destruction stretched over the entire town, and across the wide open spaces.

When he balanced the books, Brandt’s aging father had announced that they would need to take out a loan to make it through the next year. With less cows and too many mouths to feed, it was unavoidable.

But with less cows, they needed less people. So when Brandt heard about an opportunity for money - some ill-conceived scheme about an expedition into the wilds - he jumped at it. It would earn them money, and that was what they really needed, regardless if he survived it or not.

-

Elaine Drywater was in the same boat - not for the same reasons. Her sister and her brother-in-law working on someone else’s farm, her nieces and nephews wearing borrowed clothes - well, Elaine was thankful they had been spared the fate the rest of New Gillette had faced, but her pride couldn’t take it. Even working hard as they were for years and years, they would never get their own land, never be able to have their own farm. Despite her talents, there was only so much for her to do.

So when the vision she had when out collecting water one day pointed towards the university in the south, and towards the quest into the wilds, she packed up and left. Money was part of her decision, yes, but there was more to it. From her time meddling with magic, Elaine had learned one thing: go where the magic lead, and ask no questions.

So she did just that.

-

Which was how Brandt McKinnon, an alcoholic rancher who had hit his stride ten years ago, and Elaine Drywater, a part-time witch with people problems, ended up waiting on the same splintery bench outside of a too-small office in Laramie.

They were opposites in almost every way. Elaine Drywater was sallow, thin white woman in a ragged skirt and splotched blouse, straw hat held in her lap. Her face was plain, dark hair gathered into a bun behind her head. Brandt McKinnon was also white, but the similarities ended there. Ruddy and with wrinkles creasing deep near his eyes, he stood at at least six feet and weighed over two hundred pounds. His blond hair was pushed back, but his beard bristled enough to obscure the bottom half of his face. He looked like he was fresh off the pastures, even still wearing his cowboy boots.

They sat in silence for a long time.

It was broken when Brandt patted through his pockets and drew out a pack of cigarettes. He opened it, but there was only one left, and it had been squashed so that tobacco leaked out of the sides. He cursed and closed the box, stuck it back in his pocket with a grumble. After all, tobacco was expensive. Elaine watched.

“I have some,” she said. Brandt glanced over.

“Didn’t think you’d smoke.”

“I don’t,” she said, and offered no more explanation as she produced a pack of cigarettes from a well-concealed pocket in the skirt and fished one out for him. “But you shouldn’t smoke it in here.”

“Right. That would be rude of me.” He took the cigarette and rolled it between roughed-up, reddened fingers. “Good idea of you not to smoke.”

“Yes.”

They sat in silence for some time longer. Brandt kept fiddling with the cigarette, probably itching for a fix, and Elaine stared at the wall, responsive as a rock.

“If you don’t smoke, what do you use them for?” Brandt finally asked.

“Spells,” Elaine said, without a hint of irony.

Brandt nodded. There were some assertions that you just didn’t challenge, and that was one of them. It wasn’t worth it. “I see,” he said. “Must be some spells.”

“They are.”

Another pause. “You’re here for the expedition?” Brandt asked.

“Yes. Has no one really been out there?”

Brandt shook his head. “Raiders and then the Ranger, if he’s real. No one more.”

“Hmm.”

After that, they didn’t speak again. There was no reason to. But it was enough to form a tentative alliance, and the both of them would need as many allies as they could get soon enough.


	4. Mages

Mages vary from one to the other, and no two are exactly alike. However, they can be separated into broad categories describing power source and magical capabilities.

Hedge Mages  
\- Relatively weak mages, but can gain immense power from power loaned from greater beings.  
\- Focused on warding, defensive, divining, and healing magic.  
\- Some offensive capabilities, but not the primary intention of the magic.  
\- Magic tends to be used by writing, or by pictures, as well as representations of targets and focuses of power and spoken spells. Offensive magic is controlled via physical means.  
\- While most of their power is drawn from internal reserves, certain spells can be boosted by “depositing” energy in them over long periods of time, as well as requesting power from greater beings.  
\- The most common kind of mage. Many people have innate power in this area but do not use it.  
\- Examples: Elaine Drywater

Elemental mages  
\- Relatively strong mages, though they don’t have many options for gaining boosts to their power.  
\- Extreme focus on offensive magic, somewhat useful for defensive magic.  
\- Next to useless regarding divination, healing, and warding.  
\- Magic is invoked by physical means in regards to both offense and defense, sometimes via spoken spells if needing a lot of power. In the rare cases of scrying, warding, or healing, magic is invoked via elemental means using representations and focuses.  
\- Power is most often drawn from the surrounding area, especially from the mage’s magical strength such was water, rocks, plants, etc. Internal reserves can be used in a pinch.  
\- Randomly develop powers, rare.  
\- Examples: Valentina Montoya-Martinez, Hemlock Aires

Deeper Mages  
\- Vary wildly in strength. Most often determined by length of study.  
\- Focused on divination and warding, as well as communication.  
\- Powerful mages can use defensive and offensive magic in either a manner similar to elemental mages or in their own, more mysterious form. Precedent of mental healing capabilities, but no physical healing capabilities.  
\- Magic is invoked passively in dreams, and “physically” when in the dream. Offensive and defensive capabilities invoked with physical means.  
\- Power is drawn from either internal reserves or from reservoirs in the Deeper world.  
\- Runs in family lines, rare.  
\- Examples: Abigail Touches-the-Moon, Ren Running Deer (unknown), Hemlock Aires

Focus Mages  
\- Vary wildly in strength. Determined by strength of object.  
\- Can be focused on any kind of magic, except warding. Warded focuses do not make a mage.  
\- Generally speaking, defensive magic is the most common, followed by divination, offensive, and finally healing.  
\- Magic is invoked by use of an enchanted object. As such, focus mages can be anyone who gets their hands on something powerful.  
\- The source is either internal or from the object.  
\- Rare as enchanted objects are. Not innate in any manner.  
\- Examples: all Dark Men and Women

Anti-mages  
\- Vary in strength  
\- Not actually mages. Their powers dampen or stop the abilities of other mages by acting as an energy sink, so for the most part they tend to be a liability as opposed to a help, as they generally unaffected by mage powers and can prevent them from working. However, when dealing with wraiths or plague mages, they are invaluable.  
\- They have no need for a source, and an anti-mage will never feel tired, since they don’t use any of their own energy to deaden magic.  
\- Passive invocation - cannot be controlled.  
\- About as rare as elemental mages.  
\- Examples: Eden Running Deer, Archer Watson (original)

Plague Mages*  
\- Very powerful.  
\- Focused on offensive magic and healing - healing coming at a price.  
\- Defensive magic, divination, and warding used less due to the nature of the mage.  
\- Plague mages can use many sources - the summoning of greater beings, internal reserves, from the Deeper world, or from their surroundings  
\- Invocations used by plague mages are as versatile as their sources: writing, spoken word, physical means, passive dream invocation. However, they tend towards physical means.  
\- Develop from other kinds of mages usually, may not even be actual mages. Innate plague mages are extremely rare.  
\- Examples: Thing-in-the-Dark, Hemlock Aires, Archer Watson

*Plague magic is completely illegal in all of its forms, partially because of the way a good deal of plague mages are made. Infestation is the leading cause of any mage developing into a plague mage. The stronger a mage is when infested, the more likely they are to become a plague mage. Infested plague mages retain a degree of cunning other infested humans do not, though they are still obedient to the hive mind, with the same goals. Their power grows, and the longer a plague mage is allowed to survive, the harder they are to kill.  
Another form of plague mage are any kind of necromancer. Necromancy, even when done “properly,” poses inherent risks to the resurrected, the resurrecter, and everyone in general. The creation of anti-mages is testament to this.  
Finally, plague mages that gain their abilities through resurrection are considered just as dangerous and suspect as any other, even though they had no option in their making. Any kind of plague mage will be killed if caught, the resurrected ones because of their undead status.


End file.
